There are moments in history that stop a newsroom dead. The moon landing. The Twin Towers attack. Donald Trump deciding to buy Greenland.
And now, apparently, Brooklyn Beckham standing up to his parents, writes Sarah Newton.
It’s undeniably sad to see any family estranged from their child, but from a communications perspective the situation has been nothing short of a case study in what not to do.
Compounding the mess is the depressingly familiar narrative that places the blame squarely on the women involved – Victoria Beckham and Brooklyn’s wife, Nicola Peltz – while the men orbit the drama largely untouched.
What should have been a private family moment has instead become a public relations free-for-all, dissected by tabloids, TikTok commentators and brands eager to hitch themselves to the discourse.
And the Penguin PR office has also had an unusually unsettled week. Split by the biggest story in the news, we’ve been locked in a cross-desk debate that has neatly divided us into two camps: Team Brooklyn and Team Beckham.
The fault line emerged when David and Victoria Beckham’s eldest son unleashed a series of incendiary Instagram posts.
When a Family Becomes a Brand
In case you missed it – unlikely, I appreciate – Brooklyn accused his family of prioritising “Brand Beckham” over genuine relationships, suggesting that public promotion and social media visibility were the Beckhams’ currency of love.
For years, the Beckhams have been the gold standard of celebrity image management. David has risen above his nice but dim footballing image to become a national treasure – despite his ability to do absolutely nothing at all.
Victoria has evolved from the Spice Girl who couldn’t actually sing, to high-fashion empress with such a carefully curated image she is usually only photographed facing in one direction (to her right, since you ask).
The kids, meanwhile, were carefully presented as charming accessories to the brand: polite, stylish and just famous enough to be interesting without being inconvenient.
But not anymore. Today that image has splintered, and the Beckhams look less like an aspirational dynasty and more like every other family discovering that social media is a terrible place to have a row.
So, who is to blame? In PPR HQ Team Brooklyn (including me) sits firmly in one corner. Their argument is simple: Brooklyn is a spoilt brat, yes, but also a perfectly normal one. A textbook case of an adult child rebelling against his parents.
He’s doing what kids have done for centuries: pushing back, choosing his partner and dramatically declaring independence in a way that makes everyone else deeply uncomfortable.
If he were an accountant from Croydon, this would be a tense Christmas dinner. Because he’s a Beckham, it’s a global PR incident.
This camp believes the Beckhams are simply experiencing the long-overdue consequences of turning their children into brand extensions before they could spell “endorsement.”
The PR Cost of Growing Up in Public
You cannot monetise every milestone, control every narrative, and sell Brand Beckham™ without eventually raising someone who wants out of the campaign.
Brooklyn Beckham has never known anonymity, not even as a babe in arms. His life in the public eye began before he was born – we even know where he was conceived (Brooklyn).
He had been commodified before he could walk, talk or consent, most memorably when he was presented to the world at his parents’ wedding dressed in a tiny purple outfit, complete with Stetson, looking less “beloved baby” and more “themed accessory.”
While most people’s embarrassing childhood photos are safely confined to family albums, Brooklyn’s were syndicated globally, cementing his role early on as part child, part brand asset.
From that moment, his existence was never just personal; it was on-message.
As he grew up, the scrutiny only intensified. Every haircut, hobby and career pivot played out in public: photographer, footballer, model, chef, hot sauce entrepreneur, each one launched with fanfare and quietly retired when it didn’t quite land.
Unlike most young people, Brooklyn didn’t get to experiment privately or fail quietly; every phase was documented, critiqued and, let’s face it, laughed at.
Being raised in the public eye didn’t just mean fame; it meant growing up with the unspoken understanding that your identity was something other people felt entitled to weigh in on.
Seen through this lens, Brooklyn’s decision to assert himself loudly and very publicly feels like the inevitable response of someone who has spent his entire life being curated, styled and captioned by literally everyone but himself.
Team Brooklyn vs Team Beckham
In our other corner is Team Beckham. This camp sees a powerful, tightly knit family blindsided by a sudden narrative shift they did not approve in advance.
From this perspective, Brooklyn hasn’t just grown up; he’s defected. To Team Beckham, this isn’t independence, it’s ingratitude.
For all the accusations of exploitation, the Beckhams have always appeared, at least outwardly, close, supportive and fiercely proud of their children.
This wasn’t a household of absent parents; this was a family that showed up for each other. Fashion shows, football matches, birthdays, weddings. The narrative they sold was unity because, for a long time, it seemed to genuinely exist.
Victoria, especially, deserves a moment of sympathy. Her entire public life has been defined by restraint, right down to her smile (no teeth, in fact no smile let’s be honest).
For decades, she has played her role flawlessly: the disciplined designer, the supportive wife, the doting mother. Now she finds herself cast, by default, as the cold, controlling mother-in-law who (*shudders*) danced inappropriately ‘on’ her son at his wedding reception.
This is a particularly cruel twist of the knife, not least because it leaves us with more questions than answers. The use of the word ‘on’ implies this was not an over-enthusiastic, champagne-fuelled mum organising a conga line or sitting down on the dance floor to the strains of Oops Upside Your Head (ask your nan), but a provocative routine that deliberately sounds salacious even if it wasn’t.
The tragedy here is that a moment that should have been filed under “things we never speak of again” has instead become a global headline.
The whole rhetoric moves from uncomfortable to grotesque, leaving all the Beckhams, especially Victoria, paying the price for a sentence that should never have escaped the family group chat.
Victoria has spent a lifetime perfecting control, only to discover that the one thing she can’t manage is how her child chooses to tell his story. And for someone who has built everything on discipline and composure, that loss of control may be the hardest blow of all.
So now, much like that other high-profile, dysfunctional family, the Windsors, the Beckhams have become uncomfortably normal.
The irony is that in trying so hard to maintain perfection, the Beckhams have wandered straight into relatability. The mystique has cracked.
Victoria Beckham, who prides herself on cool detachment and control, now exists in a narrative where she might simply be a difficult mother-in-law. David Beckham, global ambassador of Good Vibes Only, is suddenly part of a story where good vibes are, at best, pending.
In the end, the Brooklyn v Beckham saga isn’t about who’s right or who started it. It’s about what happens when a family becomes a brand, and when that brand is built on control rather than communication.
Why This Became a Communications Crisis
When family identity and brand identity become inseparable, there is no such thing as a private disagreement. Every misstep becomes content, every silence becomes a statement, and every emotional reaction carries reputational weight.
For the Beckhams, the lesson is a stark one. You can curate an image for decades, but you cannot control how the people inside it choose to grow up.
And when the children of a brand decide they no longer want to play their assigned roles, no amount of polish, pouting or strategic silence can put the genie back in the bottle.
The biggest tragedy, for the Beckhams at least, is that there is no obvious winner.
Brooklyn doesn’t look empowered so much as reactive. The Beckhams don’t look dignified so much as outmanoeuvred.
The brand that once felt aspirational now feels tainted and – worse of all – a set of parents have become irreparably estranged from their son.
The one thing everyone in the Penguin PR office agrees on is this: from a PR perspective, it’s all been a masterclass in what not to do.
Enjoyed reading Sarah’s take on the Beckham’s PR crisis? Read more blogs from Penguin PR here.
